Suburban Goddess

While working for The-Old-Country-Store-That -Shall-Remain-Nameless, I often found myself stuck on the grill during peak hours. It was there that I met Brandon, the boy with The Devil In His Pants.

I was flipping a row of eggs over easy while he was manning the bacon side, when he slid next to me and whispered in my ear, “You know, I have the Devil in my pants.”

“Facinating,” I replied. “Tell the Devil he doesn’t get a smoke break until all those orders are ready.”

These conversations continued for about three weeks. Brandon was about 6′4″, long brown hair, & beautiful blue eyes. He was quite a hit with the ladies of the store, and there was often rumors circulating about which server was his latest conquest. I was amused that he had set me in his sights; the ultimate conquest. His boss. But The-Old-Country-Store-That-Shall-Remain-Nameless had an EXTREMELY strict policy on fraternizing with the employees, and I needed my job, so I just took the flirting as an enormous form of flattery & went about my business.

As weeks passed, he took every opportunity to tell me about the Devil, which I would smile and shrug off. It was entertaining. It was an ego boost. But one particular Sunday, during an especially stressful rush, I was horrified to look down my grill line & see Brandon unzipping his pants. As I rushed down the line, almost knocking a cook into the deep fryers, Brandon gave me a wicked smile & pointed to the area directly above his carefully concealed package.

There was a small tattoo of a comical red devil, giving me the same wicked smile & wink that I saw when I looked up into Brandon’s face.

“I told you I had the Devil in my pants,” he smiled slyly, zipping his pants & returning his attention to the dozen eggs on the grill.

Indeed, he did.

And for all of you who want to know what really goes on with your food, he didn’t wash his hands, either.

I’m judgemental. I admit that. I’ve been working on it, actually. But there is one place that I stand by my first impression, and that is on the on-ramp.

Do you know the ramp I’m talking about? There’s one in every city. It has two lanes that merge into one, that in turn merges into a larger highway. And there are two types of people on that ramp; those that wait patiently in line on the left, and those who pass the line on the right & cut someone off in the front of the left line.

Think about this for a minute; do you wait patiently, watch the guy speed by, then move forward until only a nanometer separates your bumper from the car in front of you? Do you just say, “Whatever,” & let the guy in? Or are you THE GUY?

Truly, in my case, it depends on the day. Today, I’m the “whatever” person. Tomorrow, I might be the passive-agressive-you’ll-never-get-in-here person. But I wonder how many potential friendships are truly lost if you’re THE GUY. I can just see my luck, meeting an interesting person that I truly connect with, have them walk me to my car & suddenly watch them recoil in horror.

“Oh no! You’re… you’re…. that BITCH from the ON RAMP!”

When the battle lines are drawn & word gets out that your marriage is on the rocks, the advice starts pouring in from all angles. I’ve actually been amazed at how many people have called me out of the blue to ask, “What happened?” “What’s wrong?” and my favorite, “Are you single yet?”

I’ve noticed, though, that the advice weighs heavily upon the situation of the person who’s offering it. And there are two distinct camps: Stay & Suffer With The Rest Of Us vs. Get Out And Be Miserable With The Rest Of Us. Married people have a VERY different take on this situation than single people. And then the single people fall into two distinct groups also; Still Single & Been Divorced. I have to differentiate the two; the advice is quite different.

My favorite, and the one I’m currently putting the most stock in, is from the married people.

“Marriage is work.” No kidding. More like slave labor, because you don’t get paid in marriage. You work FO FREE. (Yes, I said FO. I’m not Michael Richards, I’m from Louisiana & we all have this speech impediment.) But all relationships are work. There’s no such thing as a perfect relationship. And if you write to tell me your relationship IS perfect, then I suggest you either join the rest of us in the real world or hand over your drugs.

“All marriages have their ups & downs. You just have to get through it.” Again, beautiful advice, but what if both parties aren’t currently willing participants in the “getting through” part? This is where I lean back towards my redneck roots & threaten to call my daddy. “Daddy, bring the shotgun. He’s bein’ stubborn again. You might oughta knock some sense into ‘im.”

And the women who are going through “the same thing!” Then you start to feel guilty about talking about it because they start to realize that they’re terribly unhappy in their own relationships, and suddenly the conversation has turned & we’re not even talking about me anymore, but about “Guess what that @$$hole did to ME last night!”

It gives me a sense of comfort to know that everywhere, married people suffer. Whether we will make it through this or not, it’s still to early to tell, but at least I know there are a lot of people out there concerned about me & my well-being. And that really means a lot to me. Despite their advice.

Since I was at my parents house & had a built in babysitter, I decided to do something I swore I would never, EVER do. Flipping through the sale papers on Thursday got me so excited about Christmas that I broke my solemn vow and planned to get up before the light of day on Black Friday.

“You’re crazy,” my mother lamented.

No! I was inspired!

So I laid out all the sales flyers & planned my attack. First Target, then Wal-Mart, Sams Club, Home Depot, Circuit City & various drugstores on the way back to the house. “I’ll be back by 9:00am,” I told my mother. She laughed at me. She LAUGHED at me! Unbeliever! Ye who do not believe! Ye who does not behold the power of a woman with a CREDIT CARD. Oh, sad day.

Alex actually gave me a head start, coughing untill all hours of the night. So I got up at 4:00am, got dressed, & set out to my first destination with sales flyers in hand. When I reached Target at 4:45, I was surprised to find only a dozen people standing in line. It was unseasonably chilly, and I only wore a sweatshirt, so I blew on my hands to warm up. Only a few minutes & I would be at the front of the line. Christmas mecca, here I come! People began to slowly fall in line behind me. I actually felt excitement as I watched the workers pour into the building at 4:55. And then I saw the holiday hours posted on the door.

SALE STARTS AT 6:00AM

What???? Everyone knows doorbusters start at 5:00am! Now I was faced with an awful dilemna… do I stand in the cold & wait for an hour while all the items I wanted to get are selling out somewhere else? How could I make such a huge mistake? Here I was, making my first attempt at Black Friday at 31 years old, and I have already failed. (Sigh.)

So I resigned to my fate, and waited it out at Target. When the doors opened, there was such a rush to the Electronics Department that I didn’t get everything I wanted. I picked up what items I could get to, and headed to the checkout. When I reached the car, I decided to just “go see” how bad it was at Wal-Mart. Amazingly, there were no lines. The 5:00 rush had descended & gone, like a hoard of locusts on a crop of sweet corn. But all the items I had wanted to get were still there! It gave me such hope that I decided to push on to Sam’s Club. Again, no crowd, and everything I wanted was there! By now, my Starbuck’s Frappaccino had kicked in full speed, and I was deep in the throes of Christmas Spirit. So I shopped. Oh yes, I shopped.

I walked in the door of my parents home at 8:45am.

“Didn’t get everything, huh?” my mom said sympathetically. I held the pause for a moment, savoring the ensuing drama before I lifted my hands high over my head, Balboa-style.

“I rock! I got EVERYTHING on my list! On SALE!”

And that, my friends, is how Black Friday is DONE.

I traveled home to New Orleans for Thanksgiving, taking a much needed break from reality. Since the birth of my daughter, my family has found a way to deal with each other for small amounts of time, so we decided to get together for a few hours on Thanksgiving Day.

As I sat on the back porch of my cousin’s house watching my relatives interact exactly as they did twenty years ago, I drifted back to five-years-old, sitting in the folding chair and listening to them tell stories about one another while sipping cheap beer from Koozies. (You ain’t redneck if yer beer ain’t in a koozie.) Only now, time has etched lines into their faces, and I was overcome with a feeling akin to sympathy. These people have lived HARD lives. Who could possibly begrudge them their alcoholism & cynical comments? If I had to live the life they had, I’d be drunk, too. As it is, I feel I hardly have the right to complain about ANYTHING, but even when my life is at it’s worst, I don’t have to deal with the heartache & unhappiness that these people have suffered for a lifetime.

Maybe I’m in the Christmas spirit, or maybe I’ve finally decided to just let go of old demons, but I LOVE these people. Even if they say I’m fat, or uptown, or my baby is ugly. They only say those things because they’re wretchedly unhappy & have to do something to feel better about themselves. And when the alcohol doesn’t work anymore, that’s when the meanness comes out. But I don’t think they’re genuinely mean.

I am a dishwater blonde. I’ve always hated that term. Not blonde enough to be considered BLONDE, not brown enough to be considered BROWN. Just a mousey shade somewhere in between. BOR-RING.

It has taken me years to grow out the various forms of damage I have inflicted upon my hair. I used to think I NEEDED to be blonde, so for years I overprocessed (fried) my poor fragile fine locks until they resembled a pile of hay. After the whole head process, I decided to go “gentler” & just highlight, so instead of an entire head of fried hair, I had fried streaks á la Pepe Le Pew. I never achieved the look I was going for, so when I got pregnant, I just gave up & let it go. Amazingly, that’s all it took for me to get the hair I always wanted; long, soft, & shiny. But still dishwater blonde.

But this morning, while going through my usual beauty rituals, I noticed I’m getting quite a few grays. Now, men don’t handle grays quite like women do. For a while, we pluck. It’s the simplest form of denial. But for every one that we pluck, two grow back, & before you know it, they’ve multiplied like rabbits on Viagra.

So here it is, the next logical step of middle age. I’m too young (vain) to admit defeat, so it’s time to pull out the bottle again. But now I’m faced with a choice. Stay with the mousy-dishwater-color, or shake things up a bit? I have to say, there is a little voice in my head, pushing with a fair amount of persistance;

“Go red!”

There is something undenaibly sexy about redheads. They’re spunky, outgoing, fiery & bold. They’re noticed. And being at the junction of Old & Busted St. vs. A New & Exciting Me, I’m inclined to take the path less traveled in my life. I have the skin tone to pull it off, I have a red-headed daughter, & honestly, I have the sheer lack of caring-who-gives-a-damn at this point. So I’m thinking I’ll find a salon sometime this weekend and parasail off another cliff in my life.

Change can be fun.

Okay, so I was scared to write about this because some people will consider it truly evil, but I look back at it as a lesson learned & now, it’s actually kind of funny. So read on, but don’t judge me… you’re not perfect either. Or go ahead and judge, but you’ll have to deal with the consequences someday.

About ten years ago, I was living at the poverty level with my first husband. We were both in school, living in a one bedroom apartment and working two jobs to make ends meet. That didn’t stop me from following my higher calling in the arts, though. I just had to get creative with my creativity. Since money was tight, art supplies were scarce.

I’ve always been fascinated with drying my own flowers & making my own potpourri (especially since it was so expensive to buy potpourri at the time.) So when I found a book on how to make your own, I was pretty excited. The only problem was, where was I going to find an endless supply of fresh flowers?

“That’s easy,” said the ex. “At the cemetary.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking, because I thought the same thing. My Catholic upbringing immediately kicked in the Guilt Reflex. “No way,” I said. “That’s sick.”

“Seriously, who cares? They’re dead. They don’t care,” my ex convinced me. So we loaded up in the old beat-up Toyota & headed down to the local cemetary. We steared clear of the funeral in progress & drove towards the back. Under an blue tent in the back was a large display of funeral arrangements. I took my plastic bag and cautiously approached the grave. As I started to pull the stems from the arrangements, I looked down at the headstone on the fresh grave and mumbled a silent apology to “George.”

“I’m really sorry, Mr. George, but I promise you’ll live on in my memory,” I told the dirt. It did not respond, but I left with the most uneasy feeling I’ve ever had. That night I pulled the petals from the stems & laid them out to dry on a screen in the back of our closet.

Two days later I came down with the most wicked kidney infection I’ve ever had. It was so painful that I could not move from the fetal position. I felt like someone had stabbed a knife into my lower back, & the searing pain was so intense that my ex had to physically carry me into the emergency room. A couple off CCs of morphine later, I was told I had a cyst on my kidney that was being smashed between my infected kidney & spleen, and that the pain would subside as the antibiotics kicked in. We didn’t have health insurance, so we had to pay the entire hospital bill out of pocket, and I couldn’t afford to stay overnight in the hospital. So I went home with a bottle of Amoxicillin and a renewed sense of faith & karma.

As soon as I felt better, I dumped all the flowers I’d stolen in the garbage, and spent money we didn’t have to bring fresh flowers to George’s grave. Call him God, Allah, Budda, whatever you want. Call it faith, karma, vengence, I don’t care. There is a balance on this earth that must be maintained, and whether it’s controlled by the forces of the Universe or the Hand of a Supreme Being, I just know one thing.

I’m definately don’t want to piss it off again.

I’ve been trying to go see this movie since it opened, and finally got around to it. I was a big fan of Da Ali G show, although I admit it took a while to warm up to. I personally prefer Bruno to Borat, & I’m anxiously awaiting his run on the big screen, but either one cracks me up.

I personally think Sacha Baren Cohen is a genius, and he must be laughing at the backlash “Borat” is getting. It amazes me that people are attacking him; if you don’t want to be portrayed at a clueless, drunken, racist idiot, then perhaps you shouldn’t be one! Parts of this movie were downright painful to watch, but I could not stop laughing. It says something about my character when I find other people’s discomfort entertaining.

…you’re thinking of a good friend you had in high school, but their last name escapes you…

As I wander down the path of self-fulfillment while dodging darts of negativity and self-loathing, I realized part of my life that is missing is music.

I used to put my earbuds in everyday & drown out the unhappiness of corporate woes around me. As I moved up into management, I started thinking it necessary to be more aware of my surroundings, so I put my iPod in a drawer and forgot about it.

Fast forward six months later, after a near-nervous breakdown & lots of harbored resentment of the negativity that surrounds me. I realized, I don’t WANT to hear the conversations around me. So I pulled out my iPod, blew the dust off, and proceeded to skip down the pathway to my happy place, which is inhabited by NIN, Nickelback, & the Black-Eyed Peas. (Yes, I have issues. I prefer to call it DIVERSITY).

So I’m jamming away, completely oblivious to my surroundings, when I turn around to find someone standing behind me.

I jumped. She jumped. I screamed. She laughed.

I just hope I wasn’t singing out loud as loud as I was in my head.